All The Emotions, All At Once
Our last day had arrived. Two weeks had passed. Our journey as a group of healers-in-training was ending.
Our class about curanderismo at the University of New Mexico was, in a word, transformational.
At times, I tried to use the words fun, energizing, amazing to describe the program, but those were not the correct descriptors.
Then I used the words like challenging, difficult, introspective, emotional. Still not the right words.
Then I realized it was all of those words.
And above all, it was life-changing.
After two weeks of observing our maestras y maestros at work, after two weeks of healing ourselves, only a blend of all emotions would suffice to end the program.
We began the morning outside on the lawn where we called upon the four directions and the universal energies, and heaven and earth. We received the blessings of the smoke of the sacred copal.
Then, we gathered in two large circles facing a partner. There, we looked deep into each other’s eyes and shared everything: hopes, aspirations, lingering doubts, worries, words and thoughts unsaid.
Tears flowed, sobs followed. Earnest and strong hugs completed that portion.
And then Rita, our maestra, instructed us to follow her lead. She leaned back a bit, laid her hands on her stomach, and began to jiggle her belly. She then let out a loud laugh, more like a cackle. She went around jiggling her belly and laughing with a wide, happy smile, and just then the mirth went viral.
As easily as we had cried our hearts out just moments before, we were now howling in laughter. Some were giggling, others chuckling, some were hysterical. I was doubled over, laughing, coughing, crying, expelling all that I had left—the residual emotions of sadness and joy, pain and relief at all once.
I was experiencing my most favorite feeling of all: when my body doesn’t know what it’s doing, when it doesn’t know whether to feel happy or sad, but instead all the emotions, all at once.
I once called this coming unstitched, and I’ve truly experienced it maybe once or twice in my adult life.
There on the lawn outside of the Anthropology classroom, that final day of our course, I experienced my third unstitching.
Yet now, as I reflect on that exact moment, it wasn’t so much an unstitching as it was a coming together. It was the moment when I felt complete as a living, breathing human, at last in touch with his highest potential.
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Photo by Denis Agati on Unsplash
Heal Thyself First Curanderismo Series
Part 1, In the Temazcal
Part 2, Rescuing My Inner Child
Part 3, Herbs for Healing
Part 4, Parteras de Alma